So you’ve decided to embark on the adventure of the Belt of Tokuno. Let’s see if we can't get you started off on the right foot. There's a lot of newer players to the shard (and possibly some veterans) who may be somewhat unfamiliar with the Tokuno Black Belt system which is unique to the UO Evolution shard.

While much of this information can be found on the Wiki, I figured I'd put everything together in one nice, neat little package for everyone! My intent with this post is simply to inform and educate. This will not be an instructional post to give you the exact method/rotation that I use to kill a room full of Samurai and Temple Priests... I’ll leave that open for discussion. I will however present a thorough, well tested, informative post that will hopefully allow you to more effectively complete your Black Belt. So without further ado, let’s get started…

First you’ll need to obtain a White Belt, which can be purchased from player vendors or, if you're so inclined you can even craft one yourself with a high enough Tailor skill (100+) and 12 Ancestral Cloth. Ancestral Cloth have a chance to drop on the corpses of Ancestral Spirits in Tokuno. Ancestral Spirits are a little tougher than normal creatures and have a small chance to spawn after killing just about any mob in Tokuno. So in other words... you kill a normal creature in Tokuno and it has a small chance of turning into an Ancestral Spirit version of itself.. kill the Ancestral Spirit and there’s a small chance that it will drop one Ancestral Cloth.

Great, now that you have your White Belt, be sure to insure it, equip it and head out to Tokuno. Of course that begs the question, "what mobs do I need to kill to gain points toward my belt?" Good question... in a nutshell, you need to kill 5 specific mobs in order to level up your belt: Sohei, Yamabushi, Temple Monks, Temple Priests, and Samurai. These are the ONLY mobs that will give you points for your belt... NO other mobs will give you points! You'll quickly find out that some of these mobs are much harder than others. Also, some of them have nasty attacks that one on one may not present much of a problem for you but when grouped up with one or more of their friends may result in an almost instant death. Be careful, learn their tactics, stay alive! Here’s a short (not necessarily complete) list of special moves and attacks for each mob:

Now that you've got some insight into the mobs you need to deal with, let’s talk about where you can find these guys. There are 8 separate locations that these mobs spawn:

Fandancer Dojo (located on the Moongate)

Bushido Dojo (located on Homare-Jima Island on the northernmost corner)

Echo Dojo (located on Homare-Jima Island just west of the gate in the undead area)

Isamu Dojo (located on Isamu-Jima Island west of Mount Sho)

Maze Dojo (located on Homare-Jima Island east of the Moongate)

Desert Temple (located on Makoto-Jima Island in the desert north of Zento)

Mount Sho Dojo (located on Isamu-Jima Island on the east side of Mount Sho)

Temple Outpost (Wrong Dungeon in Fel)

There are several places that you can find a Runebook with all of the Dojos marked... Domino’s Library at NEW Guildhouse is a great place to look.

Alright, now that you’ve spent the afternoon in Tokuno, you’ve probably noticed that you’ve gained about 70% or so on your White Belt. You may have even already moved up to your Faded Gold Belt by now. At this point you’ll want to start thinking about the next step in your journey to becoming a Black Belt master! Once you reach 100% in each color belt (above Faded Gold) you’ll need to obtain the next color Emperor's Seal in order to advance to the next level. For example, if you’re currently on your Faded Gold Belt and you’re quickly approaching 100% you’ll need to get your hands on a Pale Orange seal in order to move up to the Pale Orange Belt. Just like the White Belt, the seals can be purchased or crafted as long as you have 100+ Tinkering skill and 100+ Bushido skill. Once you have the correct seal, you’ll need to fill it with minor Tokuno artifacts. Minor Tokuno artifacts drop randomly from any mob you kill in Tokuno and will automatically drop into your backpack. It’s best just to save them all as you go since you’ll need a total of 280 artifacts to fill all of the seals you’ll need to get you to your Black Belt. To add the artifacts to each seal simply double click the seal and click on the individual artifacts. The Wiki has a great description of each of the artifacts and you can even check them out for yourself (on the Moongate under Displays - Belt of Tokuno). Below is a list of each Emperor's Seal and how many minor Tokuno artifacts you’ll need to fill it:

If you haven’t by now, you’ll soon learn that the lower level belts are much easier to gain percentages than the higher level belts. Once you get past Chaos Blue you’ll notice things starting to slow down quite a bit. Don’t get discouraged though, it just takes more points to gain each percent toward completion or your belt the higher you go. There’s been much confusion and debate surrounding this topic so I’ll try to do my best to clarify. In a nutshell it works like this: each time you kill one of the five mobs listed above you have a chance to gain a “point” or several “points” depending on the “level” or toughness of the mob (more on that in a second). The point(s) you gain will count toward gaining percentage toward the completion of your belt. So for example (and remember these numbers are arbitrary), your White Belt may only require 20 points to go from 0-100% while the Brown Belt may require 20,000 points to go from 0-100%. Therefore, each specific mob has the same chance to grant you the same number of point(s) regardless of the level of your belt, but each point you gain weighs less toward each percentage the higher the level of your belt. And, as stated above, the tougher the mob is the higher the chance you have to gain a point AND the more points that can be awarded. As an example (here comes the arbitrary numbers again), a Shoei may have a 1% chance to award 1 point, while a Samurai may have a 15% chance to award 15 points. And as a nice little bonus, ancestral mobs have an even higher chance to gain a point(s). Also, before you ask… yes, luck does play a factor in gaining points. Basically, the higher your luck, the greater the chance to earn a point.

There are a couple recent additions to the Belt of Tokuno system. The new Emperor's Decree augment which is a 4-slot augment that can be placed on a weapon that will give the bearer an additional 5% chance to gain a point. Additionally, if you do gain a point, the augment will automatically award 1 additional point. Lastly, there is the Belt of Tokuno power hour, which is run by Domino and Kane. Power hour will offer players an additional 15% bonus chance to gain points and of course an increased spawn rate at all 8 locations during this hour. Kane asked me to remind everyone that if you decide to go to Temple Outpost in Fel that even though power hour is an event, Fel rules still apply… so do so at your own peril. Welp, that’s about all there is to it. I truly hope this helps you become more successful on your journey toward achieving your Black Belt! Just remember, the Belt of Tokuno system is a long and arduous process and is certainly not meant to be completed overnight. Just be diligent and stick to it and before you know it you’ll be a Black Belt master! If you have any questions or need help with anything feel free to track me down in game… take care and have fun!~ Reside

Very well put together, Reside. Say, do you want a job at the UOE-Herald?

Anyways-- ill probably get flamed for this-- I loved your post Reside; but the fact that I couldn't fix any spelling errors-- or typos-- along the way, almost started my hair on fire.

I notice there were a few-- just like there are in my posts-- along the way, so I encourage you to spend time rereading this inspiring post and see if you can fix them in your spare time.

Please understand that I am not being anal retentive, in a negative way, here. On the contrary, the wiki needs awesome informative pieces of factual lore, like this, for its many pages. But as the current editor of the wiki, if I don't fix the small mistakes, everyone will laugh at me. Spell checking is part of my job, you know; right along with fact checking, grammar proofing, and finding new talent...

This work, certainly has my vote for iinclusion onto the wiki pages. +++1

Thanks Hatchi, as far as I know Kane is not willing to give out more information regarding specific numbers associated with each specifics kill? As a matter of fact I think I remember him saying something about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when I asked him.

I finished my blackbelt yesterday. I'd estimate the grind time for a black belt at 300+ hours depending on how fast you kill, if you compete with others on spawn, and if you have an emperor decree augment. This is my estimation, it could be less it might be more...